The authors study firm dynamics using a novel database of all formally registered firms in Cote d'Ivoire from 1977 to 1997, which account for about 60 percent of gross domestic product. First, they examine entry and exit patterns and the role of new and exiting firms versus incumbents in job creation and destruction. They find that while the rate of job creation at new firms is quiet high -- at 8 percent on average -- the number of jobs added by new firms is small in absolute terms. Next, they examine survival rates and find that the probability of survival increases monotonically with firm size, but manufacturing and foreign-owned firms face higher likelihoods of exit compared with service oriented and domestically owned firms. They find that higher growth of gross domestic product increases the probability of firm survival, but this is a broad impact with no firm size disproportionately affected. In robustness checks, they find that after 1987 size is no longer a significant determinant of firm survival for new entrants, suggesting that the operating environment for firms changed. Finally, they find that trade and fiscal reform episodes raised the probability of firm exit and attenuated the survival disadvantages faced by smaller firms, but exchange rate revaluation and pro-private sector reforms did not significantly lower the likelihood of exit.

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.